


Weird Is Relative

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: tumblr prompt basket [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Castiel Acts Like Endverse Castiel, Castiel is eighteen, Castiel's family is rich but heartless, High School AU, M/M, Orphan Castiel, Sam is enamoured, dean is sam's guardian, sam is fifteen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 10:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12933798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: Castiel Odinochestvo has always treated Sam Winchester and his older brother and guardian Dean like regular people worth knowing and befriending instead of the freaks everyone else seems to see. Sam is starting to get that Castiel knows just how special that is.





	Weird Is Relative

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zetal (Rodinia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "I'm not weird, you're just basic" for Sastiel (thanks, Zetal!) over on tumblr. This is in no way related to the High School Party AU.

**Y** OU HAVE GOT to be the weirdest person I know,” Sam Winchester said in admiration, shaking his head.

The target of his declaration was his best friend and secret crush, Castiel Odinochestvo. The boy was two years ahead of Sam in school, three years ahead in age, and had somehow decided on Sam and Dean’s first day at Edlund High that he was going to adopt the two new kids and be their friend. Dean dealt with that about as well as he dealt with anyone trying to make decisions for him who wasn’t Dad, but Sam was honestly grateful for the older boy’s initiative. Being Castiel’s friend had certainly resulted in less bullying from the local jocks than he was usually subjected to, and Dean hadn’t had to get into a fight to defend Sam ever since they started here.

“Pfft!” Castiel was saying, waving one hand dismissively while the other twirled a jumbo pretzel rod between his fingers like a drum majorette. “I’m not weird, you’re just basic.”

“I’m basic?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Basically,” Castiel nodded with mock sageness. “I mean, look at you! You’re, what, almost sixteen and finally hitting those growth spurts of yours, you’re athletic enough from something or other that you could get a place on the track team easily, and don’t think I haven’t noticed how many heads you’re turning now that you’re filling out those baggy clothes you used to wear two sizes too big!” He pointed one slim finger at Sam’s overheating face. “But you don’t even notice any of that, do you? ‘Cause you’re too busy still trying to keep your head down to realize you can start holding it up now.” Suddenly, Castiel smiled, an abrupt shift in expression that took the mood from playful straight to melancholy. “It’s horribly selfish of me to be glad of that, since once you start holding your head up you won’t have to ever look up to me anymore…”

“I’ll always look up to you,” Sam blurted out. Castiel’s eyebrows rose as his fingers stilled on the pretzel, and Sam swallowed hard. When Castiel continued to stare at him and the floor failed to yield to his frantic mental commands to open up and swallow him whole into the darkness, Sam dropped his eyes and mumbled, “I mean… you’re really smart and intuitive and brave and kind and you don’t seem to care what anyone thinks of you but everyone loves you anyway, or at least respects you… I just… it doesn’t matter how tall I get… you’re always going to be above me.”

“Sam,” Castiel said, sitting up in a slow roll of his spine until he could lean forward into Sam’s space, the shift in posture pressing their knees together. “I act like I ‘don’t care what anyone thinks’ because until you and your brother moved here, I didn’t have anything left to lose!” Sam jerked his head up in shock, staring into Castiel’s unusually serious blue eyes. The other boy saw that he had Sam’s full attention and nodded. “I never knew my mother, my father is in the wind, my brothers are all assbutts who bailed before I was legally able to live by myself, and I was shuffled off to live in a glorified orphanage until I turned eighteen. Mother, father, family, home… no friends to speak of since they all just wanted to be associated with the Odinochestvo name and purported ‘fortune’. You and your brother were the only ones in a very long time to look at me like I was a person instead of a prize.”

“You’re the first person in a long time to look at us like people instead of freaks,” Sam answered quietly. “And I’m starting to get that you do actually realize how special that is. I just don’t quite understand why you did. Why you do.”

“When’s your birthday? May second?” Castiel asked. When Sam nodded, puzzled, Castiel leaned back against the wall and began twirling the pretzel around his fingers again. “I’ll tell you on the third.”

“Why then?” Sam asked, trying not to sound as whiny and frustrated as he felt by this clearly bewildering turn of the conversation. Castiel glanced up at him from beneath the fall of dark lashes and smirked faintly.

“Because Dean forbid me from having that conversation until you’re sixteen,” he informed Sam, and grinned when the younger boy gaped at him. “You just start holding your head up like the boy king I know you can be, and if you wanna keep looking up to me, well, just know I’m perfectly happy to look up to you in return.”


End file.
